Beautiful beautiful Paris. How to choose where to go and what to see in our short 2.5 days there? For example there is a museum for just about everything you could imagine – counterfeiting, magic, eroticism, fans, freemasonry, clocks, smoking, perfume, tennis, playing cards and so many many more!
And of course there are the iconic sights and architecture, the Seine, just wandering around the streets. Marvelling at the rebuilding project that was Paris in the 1800s.
We felt like total Terry Tourists but we got the open-air tour bus / boat bus combination which meant we travelled a lot by the River Seine – something I never did in the cheapskate backpacking days.
Highlights:
– Musee de Cluny built around a Roman bath and focusing on medieval art and artefacts. I was so excited to realise that it housed the Lady and the Unicorn set of tapestries. 6 enormous vibrant tapestries from 1500s that I have long loved.
– Catching up with Morgan, Jezza’s longtime friend and resident of Paris for 21 years, and his girlfriend Clara. As I was explaining to the other Australian friends of Morgan’s over a group dinner, I last spent any real time together with Morgan when he was coming for sleep-overs!
– Musee d’Orsay with the amazing collection of pre and post Impressionists. Also quite an amazing collection of tourists clamouring for photos of the most famous paintings like Van Gogh’s self portrait. Or the view through the old station clock.
– Getting up early to be at Notre Dame cathedral with only a dozen others and so relishing in the quiet grandeur. Climbing the towers for glorious views over Paris and watching the weather roll in.
– Wondering if we were in fact unwitting rain gods in the mould of Rob McKenna from “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish” the lorry driver who takes the rain with him wherever he goes, especially when a front hit just as we were climbing the Eiffel Tower. In “So Long…” he is called a “Quasi Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer.”
We splurged on our final night at a lovely restaurants for a six course degustation menu with matched wines. The food was perfectly cooked tantalising flavours. We really hit it off with the sommelier and as we were leaving discovered he was passionate about Iceland and had spent a lot of time there. So we spent the next 20 mins at the computer next to the till looking through his FB photos and him writing down the must see’s, dodging the other wait staff as they were settling bills.
